PUBLIC LIVES

PUBLIC LIVES; Trying Times for a California Utility Company Executive

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

Published: December 30, 2000

LOS ANGELES—
OF all the jobs the founder of a leading environmental organization might hold, this may be one of the most unusual, and these days in California, one of the most difficult.

As chairman, president and chief executive of Edison International, the parent company of a utility providing electricity to 11 million customers in Southern California, John E. Bryson has become a major figure in the energy crisis rocking the state. Critics here say he and other utilities executives helped create the crisis by supporting the ambitious deregulation effort passed by the state Legislature two years ago.

But regardless of who is to blame, few Californians could have predicted the stunning level of anxiety now permeating the state.

California's electricity costs are soaring. On one end are energy providers who have kicked up wholesale prices to utilities by as much as 900 percent. On the other are consumers threatening lawsuits if the increases are passed along to them after the state approved measures to freeze rates through the next two years as part of deregulation.

In between are the big utilities like Mr. Bryson's Southern California Edison, which say they are losing billions of dollars through supply shortages and other developments that now force them to buy energy high and sell it low.

With consumer fears and utility debt mounting, Mr. Bryson became the only utility company executive to call publicly for urgent changes. In a provocative statement two weeks ago, he said, ''The new market structure is broken and must be discarded.'' He described energy deregulation here as ''failed policy'' even though he once supported it, and he called on state officials to ''re-regulate'' the system.

Perhaps they were not such surprising words coming from the head of Southern California Edison, which was profitable just seven months ago but is facing a year-end debt of $4.9 billion, with banks unwilling to lend more money.

''Something's got to happen,'' Mr. Bryson said, sitting in his spacious office in Rosemead, just west of Los Angeles, looking somewhat relaxed despite the growing anxieties of consumers bracing for energy bills that could increase as much as 76 percent if the State Public Utilities Commission agrees to a plan Edison has proposed.

This is hardly the way Mr. Bryson, 58, said he envisioned deregulation. He and other utility executives say they thought market forces would stabilize consumer prices at reasonable levels. Instead, the crisis has cast them as the Grinches who stole Christmas, New Year's and most holidays in the foreseeable future.

''I know this is deeply affecting him,'' said Ronald L. Olson, a lawyer in Los Angeles who serves on the Edison board. ''This is a guy who has spent his entire life, one way or another, in public service. This is very hurtful to him because he feels responsible.''

Consistent with his reserved nature, Mr. Bryson played down any impact the crisis was having on him, saying only: ''These have not been easy times. It has been very challenging.''

For an executive making more than $2 million a year selling energy, Mr. Bryson has come some distance from deep and humble roots planted in the environmental movement.

Unlike many of his classmates graduating from Yale University Law School in the late 1960's, he said he felt uncomfortable with the prospect of working in a traditional law firm. So he and friends from Yale and Harvard turned to the infant field of environmental law, founding the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit organization that has become one of the nation's leading environmental watchdogs.

''I wanted the opportunity to do something that would have a special impact, forge new ground, and that seemed more appealing,'' he said. ''I also wanted to be a leader at a younger age, make a difference at a younger age.''

It seemed a natural extension of a youth spent pursuing outdoor interests in Portland, Ore., where his father ran a sawmill. At the council, he helped write policies that became part of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, the first major federal legislation to promote a healthy environment. Later, he opened the council's western office in Palo Alto, Calif., where he caught the attention of Gov. Jerry Brown. Mr. Brown appointed Mr. Bryson chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board in 1976, and three years later named him president of the same utilities commission he is now battling. He joined Edison as a vice president in 1984 and was elected chairman and chief executive six years later.

THROUGH it all, he has remained environmentally conscious enough to warrant kind words from his defense council colleagues. John H. Adams, a co-founder and the current president, laughed off the suggestion that Mr. Bryson might be considered ''a defector'' for running Big Energy, countering that Southern California was better off having an environmentalist-at-heart in control.

''I'm confident he's living up to the standards others would like,'' Mr. Adams said. ''If he can get people to care deeply about things as he does, he can make a difference, but I'll leave the judgments of his effectiveness to others.''

At home in the upscale Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, that would be Mr. Bryson's wife, Louise, an executive at Lifetime Television, and any of his daughters, ages 24, 20, 18 and 12, who may be around. These days, the house is unusually dark. ''I spend more time walking around turning out the lights they leave on,'' Mr. Bryson said. ''I'm obsessive about it.''

Photo: John E. Bryson says energy deregulation in California is a failed policy. (Marissa Roth for The New York Times)